János Kemény (John G. Kemeny)

He lived with his family in Budapest. He attended the Rácz private elementary school on Vilmos Császár út and then the Berzsenyi Dániel High School. In 1939, after the second Jewish law was passed, the family emigrated, so he completed his high school studies in New York.

He was sent to Los Alamos for military service, where he participated in the development of the Manhattan Project, working with future Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. During this time, he met Ed Teller, Jenő Wigner, Leo Szilárd, and János Neumann, who were working in America.

He graduated from Princeton University in 1947 with a degree in mathematics and physics, and then became an assistant professor to Albert Einstein, working together on unified field theory. He received his doctorate in logic in 1949, under the supervision of Alonzo Church. He then worked at the Princeton Naval Research Institute and then in the university's philosophy department. In addition to John von Neumann, he was greatly influenced by Bertrand Russell. He later became a fellow at the University of Kent.

In 1953, at the age of 27, he was invited to Dartmouth College as a professor of mathematics. Two years later, he became head of the Mathematics Department. In 1962, he proposed the construction of the university's computer center; the center was finally dedicated in 1966.
From 1970 to 1981, he also served as the university's rector - making the institution world-famous with his work and achievements.

In 1963, he developed the world's first time-sharing computer system, developed with his colleague Thomas Kurtz, which increased processor utilization and thus system performance. The system, which became known as the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS), earned him IBM's first Louis Robinson Award in 1990.

Another result of Kemény's and Thomas Kurtz's joint work was the development of the interactive programming language BASIC (Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), which became the "built-in" language of several computers in the 1980s.

He was an honorary doctor of 19 universities, an advisor to the National Science Foundation and the chairman of the American Committee on Mathematics Education. He won the New York Academy Award. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected an honorary member at the centennial general meeting of the Hungarian Eötvös Society.
His lectures have been met with worldwide recognition and respect, from Austria and Israel to India and Japan. It is also a testament to his life's work that in 1979, President Jimmy Carter personally asked him to lead the government investigation into the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

Honors: In 1985, he was awarded the Computer Pioneer Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for the creation of the BASIC language. In 1990, he received IBM's first Louis Robinson Award for the DTSS system.